RESTRUCTURING NON-FORMAL EDUCATION FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN NIGERIA

Ajibola, Bolaji Christianah Ph.D. & Saba, Mamman Daniel Ph.D.

Abstract

Education is an indispensable tool for individual and national development. It is mandatory for every nation to provide quality education at all levels of education for the citizens. Acquisition of quality basic education is supposed to be free and compulsory for all school aged children in a formal school setting. All attempts by the Nigerian government to achieve this goal has not yielded the expected results as there are over 10 million school aged children that were reported by UNICEF to be out of school in Nigeria. It is observed that the formal school system alone might not be able to meet up with the challenge of providing basic education for all out-of-school children and youths. Hence, the need to restructure the non-formal education to provide alterative learning activity that will complement the formal setting and lead to acquisition of basic education in order to achieve the 2030 target of sustainable development goal 4. This paper defined the concepts of basic education, non-formal education, restructuring and sustainable development. It looked at the areas of the non-formal education that need to be restructured and gave recommendations which include; restructuring the curriculum to lead to award of Basic Education Certificate instead of the Primary School Leaving Certificate; adequate funding to meet up with the provision of physical and material resources needed for quality teaching and learning; enough qualified facilitators school be recruited on permanent appointment and be well remunerated.